Syndicated columns

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court isn’t about his judicial philosophy, it’s about political outcomes.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., never attained the presidency, but the funeral Saturday at the Washington National Cathedral had the feel of a presidential funeral, as has the week of ceremonial events that preceded it.

It is a tragedy that McCain, the warrior-hero, should exit the stage just when his model of citizenship is so needed.

Sen. Charles Schumer’s proposal in recent days to rename the Russell Senate Office Building after Sen. John McCain has stirred fresh debate over the removal or renaming of historical markers and monuments. Making such decisions is a complex task, requiring nuance and empathy. No historical figure can satisfy every moral requirement of the present day. George Washington owned slaves. Abraham Lincoln made racist arguments in his debates with Stephen Douglas. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not known for his commitment to gender equality. Recalibrating the public celebration of past heroes, if it is to be done at all, requires a careful assessment of why they were honored, how central to their legacy was the viewpoint or characteristic now deemed offensive, how universally shared that trait or attitude was in their era and how egregious it seems to us today.

We lost two mavericks within a week. Last Saturday, we lost the legendary John McCain. On Tuesday, we lost his loyal sidekick, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham.

It had been many years since I’d thought of the five little piggies, protagonists of the first nursery rhyme I told my kids, the first nursery rhyme I heard and probably the first nursery rhyme my parents heard. My children are young adults now, but back before they could walk, my wife and I would take their little bare feet in our hands as they lay in their cribs, wiggle each toe in succession starting with the big toe and ... say it with me:

Even if Democrats win back both the House and Senate, there is zero chance a two-thirds majority of senators will convict President Trump for paying off an adult-film star.

President Donald Trump’s interpretation of what’s legal and what isn’t puts the rest of us to shame.

When Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin next week, progressives should hope Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee do not waste their time trying to trip him up on Roe v. Wade questions but rather try to elicit from him answers that would be useful in slowing the end of the era of agency bureaucrat domination, now coming to a close with the arrival of the Trump-nominated judges. Kavanaugh is an expert in this area.

The presidency held by a cruel bigot. Many evangelical leaders parasitic on his power. The current and previous pope, along with a generation of bishops, implicated in the cover up of sexual abuse. Moral authority pulverized into dust. This is the cynic’s finest hour.

Fifty years later, the Spirit of 1968 is in the ascendancy on the left and in the Democratic Party, which is moving toward a more open embrace of democratic socialism than perhaps could have been imagined by the protesters during those fevered summer nights in 1968.

Who lost Lehman Brothers? Could it have been saved?

I couldn’t bring myself to write this piece until today. It’s not that I didn’t try. But something in my mind convinced my hands that if I put it off, somehow John McCain might be with us a little longer. I needed that. The country needed that.

Never have we needed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., more. He died Saturday after a heroic battle with brain cancer, which he bore without self-pity. He embodied time-honored virtues: courage, loyalty, patriotism, honor. His unimaginable resolve and bravery as a POW in North Vietnam freed him in a sense to fear nothing in the realm of politics – not losing, not unpopularity, not venom from his critics.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the real thing, and that is why his reputation will cast such a long shadow over our politics for years to come. McCain was the rare celebrity who was even more impressive in person than on television. I first met him after the publication of my 2002 book, “The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.” An avid student of history, McCain read the book and liked it, especially because, unbeknownst to me, it featured one of his ancestors – an army officer who had fought the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in 1916. His love of literature was not for show. I remember on a flight to the Munich Security Conference wandering to the front of the Air Force executive jet to find McCain engrossed in a lengthy historical tome. Imagine that – a politician who spent his spare time reading history. Or anything at all.

Juror No. 0302 may not have sought fame, but Paula Duncan will long be remembered in connection with Paul Manafort, whom she and 11 others convicted on eight counts of financial crime.

Many in the intelligence community have been quietly dismayed by the hyperbolic partisan behavior of former CIA director John Brennan since Donald Trump took office. But by revoking Brennan’s security clearance, President Trump has managed to turn Brennan from an embarrassment into a martyr.

Squelching the idea that women could never be abusers.

Here’s a true story about a fine woman with an advanced degree whom I will not name for obvious reasons.